Marxism
& the Jewish Question: Selected Bibliography

compiled
by Ralph Dumain

“Something
which has been an eyesore to me from birth, as the Jews have been to
the Christian world, and which persists and develops with the eye is
not an ordinary sore, but a wonderful one, one that really belongs to
my eye and must even contribute to a highly original development of my
eyesight.”

“Hitherto
Social Democracy did represent to the masses of the people the object
lesson of being the most tireless champion of the freedom of all who
were oppressed, not merely the wage-earner, but also of women,
persecuted religions and races, the Jews, Negroes and Chinese. By this
object lesson it has won adherents quite outside the circle of
wage-earners.”

“It
is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the
mere outbreak of the future world war. But even without war the next
development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical
extermination of the Jews.”

— Leon Trotsky,
“Appeal to American Jews Menaced by Fascism and
Anti-Semitism,” 22 December 1938

Books

Marxism & the Jewish
Question

Bronner, Stephen Eric. A
Rumor about the Jews: Antisemitism, Conspiracy, and the Protocols of
Zion. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003. (1st ed., 2000) See also my blog
for reviews.

Brym, Robert J. The
Jewish Intelligentsia and Russian Marxism: A Sociological Study of
Intellectual Radicalism and Ideological Divergence.
New York: Schocken Books, 1978.

Traverso, Enzo. The
Jews & Germany: From the "Judeo-German Symbiosis" to the Memory
of Auschwitz, translated by
Daniel Weissbort. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995. xxiv,
215 pp. (Texts and Contexts; v. 14) See extract The Aporias
of Marxism / Archaism and Modernity.

Traverso, Enzo. The
Marxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate, 1843-1943,
translated by Bernard Gibbons. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities
Press, 1994. (Revolutionary Series)

Nathans, Benjamin. Beyond
the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia.
Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. (Studies
on the History of Society and Culture, 45) Contents.
Publisher
description.

Pamphlets
/ Booklets

Novack, George. How
Can the Jews Survive?: A Socialist Answer to Zionism
(1969). New York: Pathfinder Press, 1994.

Seidman, Peter. Socialists
and the Fight Against Anti-Semitism: An Answer to the B'Nai B'Rith
Anti-Defamation League (1973).
New York: Pathfinder Press, 1994.

Note

This bibliography aims to
document the history of Marxist conceptualizations of the Jewish people
as a social entity, with a view towards comparisons with other
socialist views of the subject (including Jewish socialist movements of
the 19th and 20th centuries) and more general Marxist and other
socialist takes on national questions. In turn, all of this material
can be placed in juxtaposition with the struggle of non-Marxist and
non-socialist 19th century Jewish intellectuals to define the Jews as a
social/cultural, religious, or national identity and chart a course for
the future.

Marx's own controversial
intervention on the Jewish question forms a whole object of study in
itself and is only tangentially represented here. Aside from supporting
Jewish emancipation while distinguishing political from human
emancipation and ideological life from material life, constituting a
pivotal moment in the genesis of historical materialism, Marx does not
offer a concrete engagement with the Jews as a social entity and plays
off an unpleasant stereotype to indict not one group but society as a
whole. The logic of his argument and his underlying intent constitute a
topic to be pursued elsewhere.

Anti-Semitism, an integral
aspect of this subject matter, is highlighted here from a theoretical
perspective.

The question of Zionism is a
secondary concern here, though it is obviously integral to this
history.

The specific practices of the
Soviet bloc states are also not a primary focus here.

This bibliography does reflect
some idiosyncratic choices and cannot be considered all-inclusive, and
perhaps not even "essential," but it does provide a substantial lead-in
to the subject matter. Almost the entire content is in English, but the
occasional foreign-language source might be added.

All of these issues have to be
placed in juxtaposition and comparison with theoretical positions.
Given the predominant lack of sophistication (to put it politely) on
the part of all parties concerned with the Jewish question, this task
is best served by highlighting these conceptual issues.